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Cave Gates

Caves are gated for many reasons. Sometimes it is to stop vandalism and over visitation by local party goers. Sometimes gates are installed to protect sensitive Native American artifacts or other archeological items of interest. Most often they are gated to protect endangered species.

The process involves many people and is very expensive. Steel has to be acquired in advance and delivered out to the middle of nowhere where the cave in need of gating is usually located. Then the steel must be hauled to the actual cave entrance, which almost always seems to be at the top of a steep hill, or across a deep stream, or in a muddy hole. Then qualified welders must climb all over the entrance and the gate itself to weld it all together. It is long, hard, tiring work.

Gates also have a history of being breached. It is an ongoing battle between the cave builders and the "bad guys" to design gates that can't be breached. Then you have to consider the summer colonies of bats that leave some gated caves every evening, by the thousands. These bats need special chutes to allow the passage of hundreds of bats per minute through the chute. It is certainly a challenge to build responsible gates that protect animals and artifacts while keeping people out and making cavers happy. A delicate tightrope to be sure. The responsibilities of coordinating, funding, managing, and building these gates falls mainly upon the shoulders of the American Cave Conservation Association, The Nature Conservancy, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, individual state parks, private donations, and countless volunteers without whom none of this would be possible.

Cave gating is a controversial practice to say the least. Cavers and local residents near a gated cave are often angry over the gating of a cave. They usually are personally involved in a project at the cave or have a history of family outings in the cave or similar. They typically are not happy about stout, breach-proof gates being installed on "their" cave, even though the cave in question is almost always on park or private land and the landowners want the cave gated. The Nature Conservancy and the American Cave Conservation Association try very hard to utilize their limited resources to gate only those caves that really need to be gated. There is sometimes argument over what it means to "really need to be gated" but it is certain that the people involved in gating caves try very hard to make educated, researched decisions in advance of any gating and they only gate what they feel is necessary. This is a delicate position to be in and the conflicts over cave gates are not likely to be resolved any time soon. Every gate featured on this page was installed to protect endangered or threatened bats. Bats in the Southeastern USA are insectivores and eat thousands of mosquitoes every night and if for no other reason they deserve protection for this. For those that are interested bats are much more useful and exciting than just their ability to eat mosquitoes. You can learn more about bats at Bat Conservation International.

The photographs on this page were all provided to me by Kristen Bobo. I hope you enjoy the page.

This photo shows people hauling a piece of 6 inch steel angle across a knee-deep creek on the way to a cave entrance.

The steel is being hauled to the cutting area and the gate in this photo.

Steel is being brought to the cave entrance in this photo. That 6 inch angle is very heavy. There are seven people hauling this piece.

This is Kristen Bobo demonstrating how to cut steel angle.

Roy Powers, the Chairman of the American Cave Conservation Association (ACCA) welds on a gate in an old mine entrance. Bats have moved into this mine and the gate is to protect them.